Friday, June 24, 2011

Ginko

I haven't blogged about any of the wall art I have made recently so I thought it was time to remedy that. The fiber art group I belong to in Lafayette (FibR) decided to do a series of 12" x 12" challenges similar in vein to the Twelve by Twelve International Art Quilt Challenge. We ran three different challenges with the following themes:

rust and gold

blue and purple (with Tyvek™)

neutral with one color plus texture

Other than these restrictions, and the fact that the finished piece should be 12" x 12", we could do anything we wanted in any medium.

This is my piece for the rust and gold challenge.

I started with a piece of canvas that I had gessoed then painted, splattered and stamped with acrylic paints. Then I cut up the painted canvas and pieced it with rust-colored hand-dyed cotton and golden-colored silk fabrics. I embellished the top with hand-dyed cheesecloth for added texture and used some Shiva sticks to add rubbings of ginko leaves. The rubbings didn't show up as much as I wanted so I cut and appliqued metallic silk organza ginko leaves over the rubbings.

I layered the quilt with batting and backing fabric and machine quilted it using various motifs.

Then I used Sulky Solvy™ to machine stitch a large yarn and thread ginko leaf and machine stitched it to the center of the quilt top.

I zigzagged chenille yarn to the edges of the quilt to finish it.

This piece was part of FibR's recent show at the Tippecanoe Arts Federation entitled "Botanica". The show ran from May 13 to June 17 at the Wells Center in Lafayette, IN. Ginko is now at Gallery 510 in Decatur, Illinois in their consignment shop where I have some of my art pieces.